In October
1991, Sebastian Gomez, a Timorese youth, was shot dead by East Timorese
agents for the Indonesian government.

On November
12th 1991, several hundred Timorese were mown down as they attended the
funeral in the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili. By chance, the shootings were
filmed.

Broadcast
on world television, the killings focused international attention on East
Timor. In the UN, there were calls for immediate action.

A 'special
commission of inquiry' was set up to investigate. Australian Foreign Minister
Gareth Evans congratulated the Jakarta regime for such a 'positive and
helpful' reaction and said that he was 'reasonably happy' with the commission's
finding that only 19 people had been killed. Although this figure was
later upped to 50 following the outraged reaction of foreign witnesses,
the true number is almost 300.

And it was
only recently discovered that after the Santa Cruz incident, the wounded
were mercilessly tracked down and slain, a fact still denied by the Indonesian
and Australian governments.

Witnesses
in 'Death of a Nation' disclosed that 150 wounded were killed through
the night.

'They might
have simply gone bush,' suggested Evans.

Despite offering
no evidence to back up their death toll, the pandering Australian government
proceeded to publicly attack the credibility of both John Pilger and the
witnesses of the actual event.

This was
a propaganda gift for the Jakarta regime which published what it called
the Australian Prime Minister's 'official judgement' on 'Death of a Nation'
and released it to the press wherever it was shown throughout the world.

Says Pilger:
"I doubt if there has been another time when an Australian Prime Minister
and a Senior Cabinet Minister have used their high office vehemently to
deny evidence, in a work neither had seen, of murderous violence carried
out by a ruthless dictatorship in an illegally occupied territory.

'It was a
shameful episode, as was their silence when the United Nations Commission
on Human Rights confirmed the testimony of the film's witnesses and Amnesty
International reported that not only were they 'credible', but their 'allegations
that civilians were deliberately killed or 'disappeared' after the massacre
have been corroborated by other reliable sources.'